CHM Blog
The CHM blog showcases ideas and insights from our vibrant community in Silicon Valley and around the world. We take you behind the scenes of our programming, collections, and exhibits. Connecting the past to the present and into the future, we decode technology for everyone.
Curatorial Insights
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Curatorial Insights, Software History Center
The Deep History of Your Apps: Steve Jobs, NeXTSTEP, and Early Object-Oriented Programming
Tuesday, March 15, 2016
Since 2008, over a hundred billion apps have been downloaded from Apple’s App Store onto users’ iPhones or iPads. However, the technology and tools powering the mobile “app revolution” are not themselves new, but rather have a long history spanning over thirty years, one which connects back to the beginnings of softwar
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Curatorial Insights, Software History Center
Reading Artifacts, Finding Culture
Tuesday, March 8, 2016
Today a colleague pointed me to a classic in the study of material culture, E. McClure Fleming’s “Artifact Study: A Proposed Model.” In this essay, Fleming outlines a systematic process for interrogating artifacts: Proceeding from “Identification” and “Evaluation” and on to “Cultural Analysis” and “Interpretation.” Fle
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Curatorial Insights, Remarkable People
Beckman, Shockley and the 60th Anniversary of the Birth of Silicon Valley
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
Sixty years ago, on February 14, 1956, two remarkable people addressed a luncheon for scientists, educators and the press at San Francisco’s Hotel St. Francis. One of the speakers would become one of the most successful businessmen and respected philanthropists of his generation. The other would go on to win a Nobel Pr
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Curatorial Insights
The Storage Engine: A Timeline of Milestones in Storage Technology
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
The Storage Engine: A Timeline of Milestones in Storage Technology, a new online exhibit at the Computer History Museum, tells the stories of some of the key people, processes, products, and organizations that have contributed to advances in computer data storage.
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Curatorial Insights
Tools of the Trade: An historical look at technology and commerce
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Curatorial Insight
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Curatorial Insights, Internet History Program
If the Computer Fits, Wear It
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
People wear the technology of their time. The stone-working techniques that made weapons also shaped beads for the body. When weaving was new, the intertwined warp and woof that made water-tight baskets also formed clothes. Smelting produced daggers and bracelets alike. Some technologies started off wearable – Galileo’
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Curatorial Insights
Robots Are a Few of My Favorite Things by Chris Garcia
Wednesday, June 17, 2015
The 1980s: a decade when robots were as vogue as Madonna. They graced the covers of popular magazines and strutted their stuff across the silver screen. Having grown up in the ’80s, it’s no wonder why the Computer History Museum’s stellar collection of robots is my favorite.
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Curatorial Insights
Algorithmic Music – David Cope and EMI
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
No area of computing holds more interest to me personally than computer music. While many see the changes computers brought to production and performance as the more impressive innovations, computers as composers offers incredible possibilities that are only now beginning to come to light.
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Curatorial Insights, Internet History Program
What Do Anniversaries Mean? Internet Protocols at 40
Friday, April 10, 2015
This past 10 May 2014 marked 40 years since Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn published a paper hammering out the rudiments of the standard that would become known as “the” Internet: TCP, or Transport Control Protocol, later expanded to TCP/IP. The two ARPAnet alums had done the main work in a frenzied two-day burst while holed u
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Curatorial Insights, From the Collection
The World’s Smallest Computer
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Curatorial Insight, From the Collection